Capitalization made Easy: Practical Strategies for Young Writers
As teachers, we know it’s tough to get students to use correct capitalization in their writing. I used to blindly try to help them without much direction.
I eventually came up with helpful strategies for my young writers so that they could improve capitalization skills in their writing!
Practical Strategies
1. Focus
When you teach capitalization, start with one or two rules, such as at the capitalizing the first word of a sentence or the letter I. Have students keep that focus. Students don’t need to have every type of word that needs a capital letter correct when they are starting to learn as young writers. That can be overwhelming and frustrating for them.
2. Checklists
Next, try incorporating checklists for students to use while writing! These checklists may be part of the assignment or can be separate, such as the COPS checklist (capitalization, organization, punctuation, spelling). Below is an example of a combination prompt-checklists from my Fall Writing Prompts resource.
Keep reading for more strategies!
3. Model
Of course, modeling for the class is an important strategy. Try modeling short writing samples, or just sentence editing. Some teachers do sentence editing daily during morning meeting, and you can also have students do the editing, checking for capital letter errors with your (and the class’) support! Students watching other students do these checks can be a more powerful way to model than just having them watch you.
4. Try a Mentor Text
This book is great for helping teach your students about capital letters! Try reading If You Were a Capital Letter to start out the first lesson of the year, and then maybe reread it a couple times during the year as needed!
Ready to Go Activities from Teachers Pay Teachers
Wouldn’t it be convenient to have ready-to-use activities and resources to help your students with correct capitalization from Teachers Pay Teachers? These proofreading “fix-it” printable worksheets and activities provide editing practice for sentences, helping students identify errors in their own writing!
Answer keys are included, making these resources perfect for days when you have a sub. They are an effective way to help students review and improve their writing!
Five Star Reviews:
“Love being able to find things out there that make teaching easier! This is one of those items that helped kids enjoy doing some editing and proofreading. Thanks!”
“I used these as a daily editing review before our writing block. It made their editing process go much smoother with these daily practices”.
Other blog posts you may want to check out:
If you want to save this blog post for later, pin this Pinterest ready image below! If you try any of the strategies, or grab the Fall Writing Prompt Collection or the Editing and Proofreading practice let me know! Please take a moment on Teachers Pay Teachers to leave feedback. It means so much to me!
Let me know if you have any other practical strategies to help your students learn to use correct capitalization!
